Thursday Next

@Kenshi. Seriously? Citizen Kane. "A dream scheme. Does he wake?"

The "bad" ending. You've fought through waves of enemies, hours of cutscenes, some tacked on vehicle sections to get to this, the final confrontation. You get to the bunker, my elite personal guard are everywhere, their corpses pile up as you mow through them. A final door stands in your way, you blast through. I am no fool, you've slaughtered hundreds, thousands even, all supposedly better trained than you, and certainly better trained than me. I know I stand no chance against you. As the clouds of dust settle you see me, slumped over the desk. The poison was quick, painless. My final act was to steal your victory from you. The "good" ending. You've slipped through my defences, largely unnoticed. Several of my troops have disappeared or died. I assume it is through desertion or negligence. You enter the bunker. My elite guards, though numerous do not expect your relentless, precise assault. They fall one by one, none of them has time to reach an alarm. They will be discovered soon, but too late. A final door stands in your way, you blast through. I am caught off guard, I panic, scramble for a gun. You are calm, a squeeze of the trigger, a thrown grenade, a knife to the throat, who knows? My life ends before I have even raised my weapon. Your allies rejoice, the world questions my end. Should I have stood trial? Was the force that ended my existence a noble one or a more subtle form of evil? The "really good" ending. You've slipped through my defences, largely unnoticed. Several of my troops have disappeared or died. I assume it is through desertion, negligence, or an ambitious and violent captain, I care not. You enter the bunker. My elite guards, though numerous do not expect your focussed, precise assault. They fall one by one, none of them has time to reach an alarm. They will be discovered soon, but too late. A final door stands in your way, you blast through. I am caught off guard, I panic, scramble for a gun. You are calm, a squeeze of the trigger and searing pain shoots up and down my right arm, before I can react my left arm is also disabled and I am restrained. Your allies arrive in force, mine are swiftly subdued. I am hauled before the world broken, defeated, I spend the rest of my life in a prison (unless there is a sequel) a lesson to others who follow that there is no glory to be had in their inevitable defeat. The "standard FPS boss" ending You've killed everyone, corridor after corridor of bodies litter your trail of destruction. We meet in a curiously open space, probably a rooftop. I absorb countless bullets to the head and chest before teleporting to within melee distance of you. We knock the guns from each others hands and engage in a fist fight interspersed with QTE's. Then I probably fall off the building or some shit. Fin.

Things I liked about 13: Lightning. She was a strong character with a clear sense of purpose, also, eye-candy. The battle system. I liked that each of the characters had strengths and weaknesses so that there was always an optimum team for a given battle or style of play. I also liked that the system was flexible enough that if you went in with a sub-optimal team everyone was a jack of all trades so you could muddle through. The paradigm system let battles flow quickly without ever making me feel overwhelmed. Continues. As a counter to one of the things I didn't like, I did appreciate that dying did not obliterate your last 5 hours of unsaved gameplay with retry option. Gran Pulse. Seriously, that place was amazing. After being cooped up in corridors for so long, being able to roam free on the plains, see all the creatures out in the wild, it was awesome. Even more so when I got to a point where I could take down all the major threats without a worry. Things I didn't like: Hope. Say no more. I hated that when your "main" died it was game over. Especially when the other two characters were still going strong, and especially when the boss would target your main and constantly spam death. No towns. I missed being able to interact with people to do little quests and such. That there was only one such quest (that robot dude thing) in FFXIII was a disappointment. I do like monster hunts though. Things I hope will happen in FFXIII-2. Tweak the battle system, keep it largely the same, but remove the main dying = game over thing. Do something to make the armour / weapon upgrading make sense. I couldn't make head nor tails of it so I didn't upgrade anything until after I beat the game. Include towns. Make it an open world. Hopefully setting it on Gran Pulse will fix this. They can have towns in the locations that were available in FFXIII populated by Cocoonians. No jpop. Please. I don't need Lightning to be some sort of Idol on a quest to sell records or some such.

I use the Jabra BT 3030 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jabra-BT3030-Bluetooth-Stereo-Headset/dp/B000XSXZVU. Picked it because of the 3.5mm jack input so I can use / replace the headphones (my last headset died when the headphones snapped off), and the price. Not a huge fan of the dog-tag styling tbh, but it's fine when clipped on. It's also handy for my phone. If I've got a couple of mates round and we're playing battlefield or some such we normally set up the headset as the mic (sans headphones) and output audio through the AV unit, it's better than using the PS Eye since that tends to pick up too much background noise (I turn it up to 11 when I'm gaming).

I got rid of my Wii a couple of years ago. Used the money to buy a Snowboard. I don't think there's been a single title that has come out that made me regret that choice for even a second. Sales have plateaued and if you ask any of the casual Wii owners out there if they like the console you'll probably just get a shoulder shrug and be told that it gets wheeled out at Christmas or some other form of family gathering. Wii is in that respect, very much like a karaoke machine. For a while there, loads of people wanted one, then they realised that it's not that great and it sits in the corner if it hasn't already been junked or traded in. I always said it was a fad, I thought that EA made a big mistake shifting focus from leading on PS3 to trying to be a Wii developer, and I'm glad that at E3 2010 they officially sided with Sony's platform. Now that everyone is on HD TV's, the Wii technology is showing its age, especially in households where both the Wii and a current gen console are owned, that coupled with the low attach rate, especially for third party, non-mario supported titles pretty much ensures that the Wii has had its best.

$59.99... For a hot wheels car... Woah! I'd stick with the Flip Dean. Also... Swedish "road train" this would scare the bejeesus out of me. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12215915

So pleased that Valve have performed a volte-face on the PS3. Orange Box was brilliant and awful in equal measure on the PS3 so it's going to be brilliant to see what Valve can do now that they are embracing the console. Also, having had my PS3 YLOD on me, the thought of all my saves living in the cloud is very appealing.

FFX! Blitzball! I love it. Also Consider this a vote in favour of X-2.

Life goes on, until it stops.

Sainsbury's Earl Grey > Any other tea.

In the office: Too cold > Too hot. On holiday: Too hot > Too cold.

Went first, took the lead, shot. Chile, a miner issue. Ends well.

I agree the TV will become more PC like, but I think that it will go the way of the Cloud rather than HDD's. As for keyboards / remotes, it's as likely that you'll be able to use your smart phone to interface with your TV. That way your input device will be context sensitive. Traditional TV remote style for watching TV, qwerty layout for internetting. Also, you could stream from the TV to the smart phone if you need to answer the door or take a dump or whatever and don't want to pause the show.

Sort of on topic. As I am currently listening to their song so that I could link it here... I can't stand Plan B. I don't particularly dislike their music, but I absolutely detest the lead singer. For the longest time I had no idea why, then I realised that I'd seen him before, Ben Drew was the viscous little bastard in Harry Brown. Even though I know he's not actually that character in real life, I just can't get over it.

Me!

I just thought, here's a classic... "I came, I saw, I conquered." And something a little racy. Gay Magician, disappeared with a *POOF*! Smelly handed baker, kneaded a poo.

Named Richard Les.

Off to the shops. Good buy. Game over. Insert coins to continue.

Dead Space. My Dad's been playing it and there is a very real possibility that a 65 year old man will beat me to finishing that game. This must not happen.

I really liked "Small Gods", the "Death" series is also fantastic. I also like "Good Omens" which was a Neil Gaiman / Pratchett collaboration. Once I'm done with Robert Rankin I'm thinking I might read the "Foundation" series again.

Well, my disposable income should make up for a deficiency in talent and experience.

Eh... no. You can suffer the wrath of my Stealth Audi R10 V12.

Isn't that Demon's Souls raison d'etre?

Yeah sure. I need an excuse to play more GT5.

Patience young padawan. http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1976250/glasses_free_3d_technology_is_this_years_betamax/